not too long ago, i was telling heather, adam and eleanore about some of my irrational fears. now, i'm sure many of us have the same ones, like sharks. really, sharks? i live hours from the ocean, and they say you're more likely to get bit by a dog or struck by lightening than bit by a shark. and yet, i hated being in water that isn't clean. i don't like being in a lake in central california. anyway, this isn't the issue.
what am i scared of? ladders. ladders falling off of trucks in front of me. this scared me when i drove a car, and it's got me constantly changing lanes to avoid trucks with ladders on my motorcycle.
this brings me to my next one, tow trucks. especially those flatbed tow trucks that have a car on it. sure, they're chained on, but i don't care. get me out from behind them.
so, about two days after relating this fear (and somewhat spoiling a blog post for 3 loyal readers) what do i see while i'm speeding down the freeway? something in the road. at a distance, it looks like it could be a gatorback. but, as i get closer, i realize it's something different. it is...a ladder. holy ish! there's a ladder in the road. the fast lane, no less. it's not going to fly off of the truck in front of me as i fear, but it's still a hazard. i easily navigate around the ladder and see on the side of the road a guy, behind his truck. i think he had on a painter's get up, and he's seeing how he's going to run across the three lanes of freeway traffic to get his ladder, that has fallen off his truck. i also see his truck, racks on top empty.
other fears i have - mental illness. which reminds me, i need to start doing crosswords, or figure out that soduku crap.
something else to contemplate, if not fear: the chief justice foaming at the mouth after having a seizure. hmmm, maybe the next pres will have a chance to put a judge on the court as well.
something not to fear - a lack of butlers. nightline did a brief story on it. it seems there aren't enough butlers to go around. hey, lazy mofo's, get up and answer your own door. dress yourself. make drinks for your friends.
6 comments:
Right now there are probably five trucks with ladders within 100 yards of me. I'm sure none of those guys want to lose their ladders. They want to keep them almost as much as other people on the road want them to keep them.
But my take on this is that everyone should learn some basic knots. I know how to tie more knots than I'll probably use, and I really enjoy it. I take every chance I get to teach people how to tie clove hitches, square knots, bowline hitches and trucker's hitches (I don't know if that's the right name but that's how I learned it). Poor Becky gets the brunt of it, but that girl can tie knots very well now.
I was never a boy scout, but a working knowledge of common useful knots is a great tool to have. Everyone is safer if the ladders stay on the truck.
I like this post, truly random. I honestly can't think of any irrational fear that I have though. The common ones like snakes, spiders, heights, ladders falling off trucks (and for as long and as often as I have been driving I have never seen a ladder in the road or fall of a truck so it wasn't even in my radar) dont bother me. And what qualifies as an irrational fear as opposed to a rational fear anyway?
well, i would say that a rational fear would be based in some reality, perhaps past experience.
like, if every time i went to north fresno i got mugged, or even 25% of the time, i should probably be afraid of that cesspool. that's rational fear of an area based on repeated experience.
so, if i keep seeing ladders flying off trucks, then that would be a perfectly rational thing to be afraid of. but, i've never seen this happen, except maybe in movies. i have now seen one ladder in the road. yet, if i see a truck with a ladder this morning on my way to work, i'm doing whatever i can to get from behind it and speed past.
I think the ladder fear is a rational extension of anything falling off the vehicle in front of you. I've ridden with Becky as she swerved around a BBQ in Bakersfield (nice, alliteration) and I've seen other random things fall off of vehicles as well as hearing numerous stories (true or not). I think at this point in my life, it's very rational to have a healthy concern about foreign objects falling into my car.
My irrational fear: women with alopecia. Men without hair, OK. Demi Moore in G.I. Jane, OK. Women enduring chemo treatments, OK. Naturally balding women, scares the crap out of me.
Adam that was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me! I'm afraid of trucks....big trucks....big big trucks. I hate driving next to them on the freeway. I always think that they are going to swerve into me, I even think that I see it happening all the time. I really hate it when there is road constuction and that cement wall is on one side and a semi is on the other...I'M TRAPPED!
I have learned many knots but I don't remember a lot of them off hand. I remember the fishing knot, and the noose (that gave me the creeps!)
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